Updates and Newsletters: The main news stories from the major sources, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Michael Novakhov ("Mike Nova") | Public RSS Feeds on the various topics of Global Security | Topics oriented news reviews

Filling in the gaps of J. Edgar’s personality involves understanding his strengths and weaknesses across social, emotional, cognitive domains of functioning, and what follows is a speculative arm-chair analysis of those very things.

FBI investigating Muncie city governmentMuncie Star PressMUNCIE — The FBI is investigating city government in Muncie for possible wrongdoing. Although the FBI offices in Muncie and Indianapolis would not acknowledge the investigation, people who have talked to agents have told The Star Press what they were ...and more »

Rep. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.) on Thursday lambasted the Obama administration’s strategy to roll back the Islamic State and its refusal to say American troops deployed to Iraq are on a combat mission, arguing the president has no long-term plan to ensure peace and that U.S. soldiers are “absolutely” engaged in fighting on the ground.

Appearing on CNN with host Jake Tapper, Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who served four terms in Iraq, explained that the administration currently has no strategy to address Iraq’s political situation, which he says is why American soldiers are back fighting there.

“The bottom line is that we have a military strategy to defeat ISIS, but we don’t have any long-term political strategy to ensure the peace,” Moulton said. “And that’s why we find ourselves back in Iraq again today, refighting the same battles that I and my fellow Marines and soldiers fought just eight or ten years ago.”

Moulton argued that the U.S. needs a “clear mission for the troops” and a “clear endgame” coupled with a strategy to maintain stability once ISIS is defeated.

“Look, we already fought these same battles against al Qaeda, but then we pulled out of Iraq so quickly,” Moulton added, referencing President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. “And not just pulling out the troops. I’m talking about pulling out the diplomats, the people who were working in the prime minister’s office, in the ministries. The Iraqi government just went off the rails, and as a result created this political vacuum that ISIS came in to occupy.”

Tapper noted that while the U.S. now has over 4,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, the White House repeatedly refuses to call their presence a combat mission, instead emphasizing they will only be advising local forces.

“That’s just simply not true; this absolutely is a combat mission,” Moulton responded. “In 2004, I had an advisory mission as a Marine with my platoon in Iraq. We were advisers to an Iraqi unit, and when that Iraqi unit started to get overrun, we went to their assistance and started the Battle of Najaf, which was some of the fiercest fighting of the war.”

Moulton said there is a very fine line between an advisory mission and combat, “and it’s very clear from the death of the Navy SEAL just last week that this is absolutely a combat mission.”

The congressman was referring to Navy SEAL Charlie Keating IV, who was killed last week when ISIS fighters attacked Kurdish peshmerga forces he was advising.

Moulton said he was not sure why the administration refuses to say any soldiers in Iraq are in a combat role but criticized Obama’s handling of ISIS.

“This is a president who promised to get us out of Iraq and then promised to use the tools of diplomacy to prevent wars from happening and that just hasn’t happened,” Moulton told Tapper. “Our solution, our strategy is to train Iraqi troops. Well, you don’t fix Iraqi politics by training Iraqi troops. And Iraqi politics are broken. That’s the fundamental problem in Iraq that we need to fix.”

Tapper noted at the start of the interview that Moulton tweeted a photo last week of himself in uniform with a counterpart in the Iraqi Army, who was killed by ISIS fighters.

“Yesterday I lost my closest friend in the Iraqi Army to ISIS and our failed policy in Iraq,” the tweet says.

The European Parliament on Thursday strongly condemned last month’s decision by Crimea's Russia-backed authorities to ban the Crimean Tatars' representative body amid reports that access to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Crimea news website had been blocked in the region. A resolution passed by the European legislature called the Crimean Supreme Court's April 26 decision to ban the Tatars' Mejlis "systemic and targeted persecution" and "an attempt to expel them from Crimea, which is their historical motherland.” The resolution also said Crimean Tatar institutions and organizations are increasingly being branded as “extremist” and that prominent members of the Crimean Tatar community have been or risk being arrested as “terrorists." Crimean Tatar activists reported Thursday that security forces in masks searched homes and detained four Crimean Tatars in the town of Bakhchisaray, Crimea. Russian media quoted Crimea's pro-Moscow chief prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, as saying that four members of the outlawed Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir had been detained. Pokolonskaya was also quoted as saying the European Parliament's resolution reflected a "selective attitude" at a time "the whole world is fighting against extremism and terrorism." It has been "proven and established," she said, that the Mejlis is an "extremist organization." The European Parliament's resolution also reiterated its "severe condemnation” of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and "full commitment to the sovereignty, political independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.” Meanwhile, Crimean authorities reportedly blocked RFE/RL's Crimea news website. Web users in Ukraine, Russia and Crimea reported Thursday that it was inaccessible, replaced by a notice stating: "Access denied, as the site has been added to the list of banned sites." RFE/RL Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic said in a statement that the move was "an aggressive act that uses the outrageous pretext of extremism to censor RFE/RL and prevent audiences in Russia and Crimea from learning the truth about the annexation." RFE/RL is funded by the U.S. Congress through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Danila Galperovich in Moscow contributed to this report

The New Hampshire state attorney general's office said Thursday that it would conduct a criminal investigation into a group of Massachusetts police officers who were videotaped Wednesday as they repeatedly beat a man following an hourlong high-speed chase across state lines. The video shows at least two officers repeatedly hitting a man who had dropped to his knees after getting out his vehicle. The suspect, Richard Simone of Worcester, Massachusetts, faces charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, larceny and failure to stop for officers, according to Massachusetts State Police. It was not clear whether Simone was injured. Despite the proliferation of videos showing alleged and actual acts of police brutality, the rise or decline of these incidents in the U.S. is unknown. "We do know there is more public attention to it and we know there is a significant problem because these incidents keep happening," said Samuel Walker, a policing expert at the University of Nebraska. University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris said the lack of insight into police use of excessive force results from a lack of national reporting standards. "We have very poor reporting in the United States as a whole on the use of force by police,” he said. “That's frankly deplorable." ‘Data is essential’ While some local police departments compile and report information about their law enforcement activities to the federal government, submitting the information is voluntary. Walker said "data is essential" to identifying patterns of police misconduct and fixing them. But he believes a more effective solution is "strengthening the level of supervision on the street." When there are police chase incidents like Wednesday's in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, "officers lose their judgment and forget what their policies are." Training police sergeants to enforce local law enforcement policies "is the best training an officer is going to get," Walker said. But implementing uniform national or state police standards, which exist in other countries such as Britain, also would strengthen policing on the local level, Walker said. "We have this very fragmented, decentralized system, no national standards on use of force." Harris noted that the federal government does not have jurisdiction over state law enforcement agencies. But he said the federal government should make its funding to the states conditional to urge compliance with police reporting requirements. "We have 18,000 police departments in the United States," he said. "It's a hodgepodge."

A Military Budget for a New WorldNew York TimesThe military-industrial complex is thriving. Fully half of the Pentagon budget now enriches a vast ecosystem of for-profit contractors. Lockheed Martin, the maker of the ill-fated F-35 jet fighter, received more than $25 billion in Pentagon contracts ...

The United States missile defense (MD) base near the Romanian town of Deveselu, west of Bucharest, became operational this week, armed with 24 SM-3 Block IB interceptors, guided by a land-based version of the naval Aegis integrated combat system, using the SPY-1 radar. The US spent some $800 million to build and equip the base. Washington insists the MD base in Romania was built to counter a threat from Iran or other possible Middle Eastern rogue states and is not aimed at Russia. According to officials from the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Romanian-based SM-3 missiles cannot intercept Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Moreover, assurances have been made that nuclear-armed attack missiles will not be deployed in Romania. The SM-3 do not carry any explosives; they are designed to destroy high-velocity targets by hitting them directly. These assurances apparently failed to assuage Moscow, which declared the Romanian MD base a threat and promised retaliation (TASS, May 12).

The fact that the MD base in Romania does not directly threaten the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent seems obvious. The commander of the Strategic Missile Force (RVSN), Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev, told journalists this week: “The European segment of the US MD may threaten the RVSN in a limited way but cannot critically affect its battle capabilities.” Karakayev boasted: “We are developing new ICBMs and new reentry vehicles able to negate existing or future global US MD capabilities. New warheads will be able to fly along unpredictable trajectories and attack targets from all directions” (Interfax, May 10). If so, why is Moscow seemingly obsessing about the Romanian base?

The director of the Russian foreign ministry’s arms control and nonproliferation department, Mikhail Ulyanov, accused the US of inventing a nonexistent Iranian missile threat as a pretext to deploy MD capabilities that are, in fact, aimed at Russia. The Iranian nuclear problem was eliminated last year by an agreement signed in Vienna, but “the US did not follow up its promises to abandon MD plans in Europe,” according to Ulyanov. “This is a major mistake that can undermine strategic stability.” Ulyanov continued: “The MD base may be used to launch cruise and ballistic missiles, and this is a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF]” (RIA Novosti, May 11).

Russian officials accuse Washington of essentially building a double-use missile base in Romania—one that can be employed for both MD and for destroying vital strategic targets. In particular, Moscow worries the base will purportedly allow the US to eliminate President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian military/political leaders in a surprise first nuclear strike. The geographical closeness of the Romanian MD base to Putin’s official residence in Sochi, where the Russian president spends almost half his time and which has been turned into a de facto second capital, is seen as part of a sinister plan. Indeed, Putin is in Sochi this week, where he is holding a series of meetings with top Russian defense officials—and just across the Black Sea, the US is deploying swift and accurate interceptors that could hit his dacha in only a couple of minutes. Such a decapitating first strike would throw Russian defenses into disarray, allowing massed US and NATO forces to move in for the kill and lay waste to the Russian Federation.

This nightmare scenario, apparently invented in the General Staff, has been dominating Russian strategic planning for more than a decade—since US plans to deploy MD interceptors in Europe were proposed. The chair of the Duma defense committee, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, and his counterpart in the Federation Council, Victor Ozerov, both insist the MD base in Romania and a similar base that will be constructed in Poland are aimed at Russia and have nothing to do with Iran. Ozerov quotes unnamed “specialists,” apparently from Russian military intelligence: “The US MD installations in Romania and Poland may be quickly rearmed to deliver nuclear weapons” (Interfax, May 12). If the MD base in Romania could target Putin’s Sochi residence, the one in Poland would presumably be able to hit Moscow—thus, the US would have a cocked gun pressed to Putin’s head at nearly all times. According to Alexander Grushko, Russia’s permanent representative to NATO, “the activation of the Romanian MD base must be taken in context of NATO deploying additional forces close to Russian borders: the deployment of SM-3 interceptors on Aegis ships in European waters and the development of the US Prompt Global Strike system [PGS], all of which threaten Russia.” Evidently, Moscow considers the PGS to be also targeting Putin directly. Grushko insists that MD deployments openly threaten the INF treaty (TASS, May 12).

In the Russian government’s mind, this assumed grave threat requires a strong response. The possibility of deploying Iskander-M missiles in Kaliningrad enclave has been discussed, but that would be aimed against the MD base in Poland, which has yet to be built (Interfax, May 12). According to the defense ministry’s Star TV channel, Iskander missiles deployed in Crimea can wipe out the US MD base in Romania, but there is a problem: the Tarkhankut Peninsula—the westernmost part of Crimea closest to the base in Deveselu—is still some 700 kilometers away, while the official range of the Iskander-M ballistic missile is 500 km, as mandated by the INF. Star TV explains: The range of the Iskander may be easily extended “to several thousand kilometers” by using long-range Kalibr cruise missiles (Tvzvezda.ru, November 14, 2014).

The defense ministry recently published footage of the launch of long-range land-based cruise missiles using the Iskander-M missile launcher (Tvzvezda.ru, April 23). To establish a credible capability to target Romania with nuclear warheads using the Iskander, and perhaps to force Bucharest to rescind the US MD deployment in Deveselu, Moscow will have to entirely back out of the INF treaty to be able to officially test the Iskander at longer ranges, possibly using both ballistic and cruise missiles. The INF, signed by Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, has been under a growing threat for some time, with both Washington and Moscow accusing each other of violations. In 2007, as Putin was dramatically turning Russia on a path of acute confrontation with the West, he repeatedly openly threatened to scrap the treaty, in direct connection with the presumed threat of US MD bases in Poland and Romania (see EDM, February 21, 2007). If the INF is scrapped, with it go the last vestiges of arms control, thus opening the door to a renewed arms race.

Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov visited Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on April 25–26, 2016. The visit was widely hailed as the opening of a new chapter in bilateral ties (Uza.uz, April 27). President Putin called Uzbekistan “a strategic partner and a reliable ally,” while Karimov said that he trusts Russia and Putin personally (Kremlin.ru, April 26).

On the first day of the visit, the two leaders had a private dinner that lasted around four hours, and according to Uzbekistan’s leader, the two sides held a frank conversation. Karimov boasted that perhaps he is one of the few foreign leaders who has the privilege to talk to Putin completely openly, free to pose inconvenient and tough questions to Russia’s president (Kremlin.ru, April 26).

Russian officials and the press often complain that Uzbekistan is a difficult partner—frequently obstinate and sometimes effusively opposed to Russia’s initiatives in the post-Soviet space. President Karimov often criticizes regional Russian-led economic and security alliances, and he has previously ruled out Uzbekistan’s membership in any Moscow-led organization that even remotely resembles the former Soviet Union (Mk.ru, April 25). Furthermore, Uzbekistan harbors its own grudges against Russia. The Kremlin’s pledge to invest in the construction of large hydroelectric power stations in upstream Kyrgyzstan, despite downstream Uzbekistan’s protests, was a bitter pill for President Karimov to swallow (Atimes.com, September 21, 2012).

Eventually, to Uzbekistan’s muted satisfaction, Kyrgyzstani authorities, earlier this year, unilaterally annulled their bilateral agreements with Russian companies, citing a lack of progress and the insolvency of Russian investors. This was a humiliation of sorts for the Kremlin, which has been trying hard recently to posture itself as a global power (Kyrtag.kg, December 31, 2015; see EDM, January 15, 2016).

The recent settlement of longstanding mutual financial claims by both countries dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union also removed another sticking point in Russian-Uzbekistani bilateral relations. The Kremlin wrote off more than $800 million of debt owed by Uzbekistan in exchange for Tashkent giving up its claims to the Diamond Fund of the former Soviet Union (Politrussia.com, July 30, 2015). According to Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, the “Agreement for settling mutual claims and liabilities,” which was signed during President Putin’s last visit to Uzbekistan, in December 2014, and ratified by the Russian parliament in late March of this year, “will create favorable conditions for opening new opportunities for wider military, economic and political cooperation between the two countries” (Vestifinance.ru, March 25). Andrei Grozin, the director of the Central Asia and Kazakhstan Studies Department of the Russian Institute for Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, also confirmed that the settlement of the mutual claims deal will allow Tashkent to increase its military purchases from Russia in the future by making it eligible to receive Russian military loans—which had not been previously possible, due to legislative restrictions (Svpressa.ru, April 6).

The Kremlin also sees Uzbekistan as a useful partner to offset the shortage of vegetables and fruits on the Russian market as a result of Moscow’s sanctions against European and Turkish producers. President Putin expressed his satisfaction with last year’s overall 10 percent increase in Uzbekistani fruit and vegetable imports, with some fruit imports growing by 10, 20 and even 54 times (Kommersant.ru, April 27).

Similarly, President Karimov expressed confidence that Uzbekistan would be capable—both in terms of volumes and quality—of filling this niche long dominated by Turkey. He suggested that Tashkent and Moscow need to establish a coordinating joint commercial and marketing entity to facilitate these exports based on the needs of the Russian market (Vestifinance.ru, March 26).

Regional security and especially Afghanistan were also among the main topics of the bilateral discussions (Kremlin.ru, April 26). Recent intelligence reports produced by the United States government claim that Russia is secretly supplying arms and providing financial support to the Taliban, which continues to reject direct peace talks with the Afghan authorities and instead recently launched its annual spring offensive against the central government in Kabul (Al Jazeera, April 16). In the past, Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan, told reporters that Moscow considered the Taliban a potential ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Afghanistan (Svpressa.ru, April 20). However, Russian diplomats, though acknowledging having direct channels of communication with the Taliban leadership, have always denied handing over any military equipment to this group (PressTV, April 25; Afghanistantimes.af, May 5).

Perhaps aware of all these rumors and acknowledging Russia’s potential and capacities in the region, President Karimov recommended that the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG)—which includes Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the US—invite Russia to join international efforts to resolve the Afghan crisis. The QCG in its current format already convened four meetings since the beginning of 2016. But so far, this international grouping has been unable to force the defiant Taliban to sit for direct peace talks with the government in Kabul or to lay down its arms. In Karimov’s words, any attempt to isolate Russia from the conflict-resolution process in Afghanistan is doomed to fail. Afghanistan’s former president Hamid Karzai had earlier also suggested expanding the QCG by including Russia, Iran and India, three important stakeholders in Afghanistan, in order to find a lasting solution to the Afghan crisis (Khaama.com, February 7). At the same time, however, such attempts run the risk of potentially turning Russia into a spoiler rather than a partner in bringing peace to war-torn Afghanistan (VOA, April 18).

Overall, President Islam Karimov’s recent visit to Moscow was rich in content both in relation to bilateral issues and broader regional security issues. The removal of some longstanding hurdles in Russian-Uzbekistani relations is expected to pave the way for greater trust and cooperation in the future. In particular, the door has been opened for Russia to potentially offer greater weapons sales and more favorable trade terms to Uzbekistan, especially in fruits and vegetables, without imposing any requirement on the latter to join Russian-led economic and security blocs like the Eurasian Economic Union or the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Thus, the outcome of the Karimov-Putin meeting strongly suggests that the Kremlin may have finally accepted Tashkent’s terms for building pragmatic bilateral relations.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Straining to mend their party after months of chaos, Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan declared themselves &quot;totally committed&quot; to working together after a fence-mending personal meeting on Thursday. Ryan praised Trump as &quot;very warm and genuine,&quot; and suggested that after initial hesitance he may well end up endorsing the GOP candidate for president....

Omar Mateen and 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting - The Dots, The Darkness, and The Mirrors, part 2

Quotes and Questions for Investigations

THE DARKNESS OF THE LOWLY TRUTHS

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The American KGB and the Comey's visions: can Hoover's COINTELPRO thugs be transformed into the modern counterintelligence officers? | M.N.: The American KGB wants to take over the US government. Oy, gevalt! Maybe, it is the time to order a ticket to Madagascar.. - Quotes and Comments

What is wrong with the FBI?

The Kiryas Joel affair: "Sexual abuse" or FBI abuse? | Michael Ameri's suicide as a protest against the FBI: What is wrong with the FBI: its strategy, tactics, techniques and methods if they lead to these unexpected and tragic results?

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Is there a general attempt to mislead and to manipulate the FBI using the issues of sexual abuse as a pretext, as a way to deal with the political and other opponents?

Investigate the "investigators"! Part 2: FBI as "a high church for the true mediocre"

Investigate the "investigators"! FBI as "a high church for the true mediocre"

"At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre." Norman Mailer | "Investigate the "investigators"! I would think that no less than 50% of the problems this country is facing is due to the FBI's inadequacy. This is a very important issue and the time has come to address it." - by Michael Novakhov